On October 29, an unprecedented DANA collapsed on Valencia, causing more than 200 deaths, dozens missing, 950,000 affected and devastating damage to homes, vehicles and public roads. The Generalitat (PP) and the Government (PSOE-Sumar) blame each other for lack of prevention, delay in reaction and failures in the alert systems.
That same day, in Malaga, the AEMET activated the red warning due to heavy rains at 12:18 in the morning and an hour before, at 11:09, the Andalusian Government activated operational situation 1 of Civil Protection. That day, there was no Emergency Coordinator in Malaga in charge of the device to follow the evolution of the storm, because the position – dependent on the Delegation of the Andalusian Government in this province – had been vacant and had not been replaced for months, since he retired. the previous one.
The storm on October 29 in Malaga caused considerable damage to the surroundings of the Guadalhorce riverbed as it passed through the municipalities of Pizarra, Álora and Cártama, but there were no fatalities. Perhaps, if it had caused more dire consequences, the fact that at that time the position of Emergency Coordinator in Malaga was vacant would have become a major political conflict. As is happening in Valencia.
The Junta de Andalucía considers this position “very important,” because “every time the Emergency Plan is activated in Andalusia, there must be a responsible delegate in each province who serves as a link with the Government and coordinates command on the ground.”
Its functions include managing all activities related to public safety, disaster response and civil protection. In that red alert, as in the DANA that returned to Malaga this week, the position was still vacant, but on the front line was the advisor to the Presidency, Antonio Sanz, who personally coordinated the 112 device.
Antonio Sanz’s uniform
Sanz is recognized, even by his political rivals, as having a special inclination to take these things seriously. The veteran leader of the PP was a delegate of the Government in Andalusia in the last stage of Mariano Rajoy, and even then he distinguished himself by listening to the high command of the Police, Civil Protection, Emergencies, and Infoca.
“He likes to get into puddles, to be in advanced command posts,” says a fellow Government member of him, who remembers how, as vice-counselor of the Presidency in the previous term, he rushed towards the fire when the hillside was burning. from a mountain range in Malaga, in the middle of the electoral campaign.
“Antonio tells the president that we must buy satellite phones in case a meteorological catastrophe occurs, so as not to be left incommunicado.” [como ocurrió en Valencia]and the president pays attention to him,” jokes another source from the San Telmo Palace.
One of the questions that has been floating around the Andalusian Parliament this week, under the threat of another climate tragedy in five of the eight Andalusian provinces, is what would have happened in Malaga on Wednesday if DANA had arrived without the recent and wild precedent of the Valencia catastrophe, two weeks before.
Lessons learned from Valencia
Everything that Carlos Mazón, president of the Generalitat and, therefore, mainly responsible for managing the catastrophe, did not do, is what the Andalusian Executive of his party colleague, Juan Manuel Moreno, had planned this week.
The Valencia tragedy has served as accelerated learning for Moreno, but in Andalusia there was already a natural predisposition to “take these things seriously.”
It is the largest and most populated community in the country, which has had to deal in the past with first-level climate crises, especially fires in summer, in prolonged periods of drought that, a few years ago, endangered the National Park of Doñana. In the management of fires, which are prevented seven months before the first spark occurs, the coordination that exists between the AEMET – the Government – and the Junta de Andalucía has been cemented.
The Meteorological Agency recognizes that the chaos between administrations that has surrounded the Valencia tragedy, the lack of foresight and reaction, and the disorientation of the regional government is unimaginable in Andalusia. “Here we learned from the fire how to coordinate and mobilize in the face of other catastrophes,” they warn.
The DANA in Malaga has resulted in zero fatalities. In the first hit of the storm, a man died of a heart attack after being rescued, and was considered an “indirect victim” of those torrential rains.
Given the floods that flooded the capital of Malaga last Wednesday, and previously municipalities in this province, Almería and Granada, the Board was from the beginning in permanent coordination with the central Government and with the mayors of the most affected municipalities.
In Valencia, the mayors of the towns devastated by DANA had to make decisions on their own that corresponded to the Generalitat, such as the closure of schools.
Moreno left the Andalusian Parliament late Wednesday night, where the Budget debate was being held, to plunge headlong into the mud of the DANA that had just flooded Malaga, forcing the evacuation of 3,000 people and a thousand homes on the banks of the Guadalhorce.
Moreno, a burning nail for the PP
The Andalusian president has emerged clean from the political mud of the DANA and that has had two internal readings: the first is that an autonomous president could manage a natural disaster, hand in hand with the central government, without incurring the string of errors that he has committed. Mazon.
In that sense, Moreno’s example sinks his partner deeper into the mud. The second reading is that Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s PP, punctuated by the Valencian’s management, has been able to shine a light on the mud of the Andalusian’s management. The criticism of Mazón has been extrapolated to the entire PP, pointing to it as a “climate denialist” party or linked to another party, Vox, with which until a few months ago it shared the Government, and whose argument in defense of “food sovereignty” is usually confront environmental policies and the 2030 agenda.
The president of the Board saw it clearly from the beginning, which is why these days, his team has deployed a resounding prevention plan, ordering the closure of schools in Seville, Cádiz and Huelva, when DANA was in Malaga and it was not yet known What direction would it take?
On Wednesday night, Moreno appeared on Canal Sur Television, dressed in the anorak of the Emergency Service 112, to ask Andalusians for caution, to stay at home, and to apologize for the annoyance of leaving the children without school.
“Prevention is better than cure,” said Moreno, already displaced to the 112 Emergency Coordination Center in Malaga. Hours before, he had left without even voting in one of the most important debates of the year, the first in the processing of the Regional Budgets for 2025, with almost 49,000 million euros.
The president of the Board could allow it. It has an absolute majority of 58 PP deputies and the connivance of Vox, who added their votes to overthrow the three amendments presented by the PSOE, Por Andalucía and Adelante Andalucía.
After seven in the afternoon, when the AEMET warning for heavy rain was still orange in the province of Malaga, a member of the State Meteorological Agency spoke with Moreno to warn him that they were going to raise the warning level to red in the province. capital of Malaga, Axarquía, Costa del Sol and Guadalhorce, because a greater DANA was expected at dawn, until eight in the morning.
Leave the Andalusian Parliament
The popular leader, glued to his cell phone, spoke with the president of the Chamber, Jesús Aguirre, in the middle of the budget debate. During the morning and early afternoon, the DANA had flooded the center of Malaga, flooded hospitals, suspended train lines, closed the Metro and forced to evacuate almost 4,000 residents from a thousand homes on the banks of the Guadalhorce, which was overflowing. and at a very strong speed.
Moreno had to submit to the opposition’s questions the next day, Thursday, in the Government control session that takes place from 12 noon.
The president asked to bring it forward to nine in the morning, so that he could immediately leave for Malaga and personally supervise the emergency device by DANA. But the evolution of the storm that Wednesday forced him to accelerate his departure and he left without even participating in the budget vote (confident that they were not in danger).
The suspension of the president’s control session in the Andalusian Parliament is not usual, and the left-wing opposition was eager to attack him with the judicial case that is plaguing his Government, for a possible crime of prevarication in the contracts held by the Andalusian Service of Health (SAS) to private clinics.
Moreno’s “shocking” caused some socialists, privately, to accuse the president of the Chamber of allowing a “cacicada.” But no one strongly reproached him in public.
Opposition support
The general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE, Juan Espadas, wrote a tweet in support of his rival, while he was on his way to Malaga to pilot the emergency device against DANA. “Our gratitude, from the bottom of our hearts, to the tireless efforts of those involved in the emergency tasks and our support to the Government of Andalusia and Spain in the management of this DANA crisis. “We are here to help with whatever may be needed,” Espadas wrote.
Only the Vox spokesperson in the Chamber, Manuel Gavira, made a reference during his intervention in the budget debate: “I think it’s good that he goes to Malaga, as long as he is not going to do catastrophe tourism.”
The extreme right has left countless denialist statements in the Parliament’s session diary, especially when they promoted the law to amnesty illegal irrigation in Doñana, an initiative to which the PP joined, although it was finally aborted by the central government.
Vox has not found its place in this climate crisis. In fact, in the first plenary session held in the Andalusian Parliament after the Valencia tragedy, Gavira even surprised his colleagues on the bench by saying: “Vox does not deny climate change.” “Welcome,” Moreno replied, ironically.
In general terms, the political climate in Andalusia is far from the hypertrophy of war that is heard daily in Madrid. Here, in fact, they fight more over the replicas of the national conflict – amnesty law, singular financing, release of ETA prisoners, etc. – than over domestic issues. The absolute majority of the PP dominates the political and media agenda. But it is also true that the DANA of Valencia has fostered another image of politics in Andalusia.
In President Moreno’s circle, from minute one, they claimed that Mazón had made a mistake due to lack of prevention, experience, and maneuver in the face of an emergency of that caliber.
The Junta de Andalucía supported Feijóo’s approach: “I would have declared the situation of emergency alert 3 and would have requested the assistance of the Government of Spain and the EMU from minute one,” admit sources from the Palacio de San Telmo.
Once the DANA has passed by, with notable destruction, but without fatalities, a profuse album of official photographs of President Moreno begins to surface, with his feet and anorak muddy, walking through the streets and affected municipalities. Listening with a worried face to the 112 controls, smiling at the neighbors, with one foot on an excavator that bails out the mud… an institutional profile that shines brighter when the sun rises and illuminates the yellow mud that the tragedy has left behind.
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